Early Afternoon Conversations
by Bittersweet Mika
Summary: Short interlude in the "Late Night" universe. Sakura wanted a nap, instead she’s stuck helping Ino out at the flower shop. And the blond just won’t shut up. Takes place after "Late Night Stumbling" One-shot, very short. Enjoy.


**Title: **Early Afternoon Conversations

**Spoilers: **None really, some for my other stories

**Rating: **PG, for light swearing

**Summary:** Sakura wanted a nap, instead she's stuck helping Ino out at the flower shop. And the blond just won't shut up.

**Authors Notes: **I've hit a wall on some of my other stuff. So I'm being irresponsible and writing this instead because it popped into my head and wouldn't leave. Wrote in a rather short amount of time and not beta read so it's not perfect. But it should be funny. I hope. Taste the Rainbow

**Feedback: **Please? Make my day happy and tell me what you think.

* * *

"I think it's the smoking that's the worst," Ino said as she bustled around her family's shop.

"Hmm," was Sakura's reply.

"But then there's Shikamaru who never even wants to move," Ino continued to talk, not noticing that Sakura was counting the floor tiles out of boredom.

"Uh-huh," Sakura was sticking to non-committal responses, hoping that it would discourage Ino from trying to continue.

It wasn't working.

"And do you have any idea how much barbeque that I've eaten in the past couple of months?" Ino ranted, "I'm going to get fat!"

_"Well maybe if you got up off your ass and trained more, you wouldn't be so worried about putting on weight,"_ Inner Sakura noted.

Sakura could only agree with her other self.

"Oh no! I forgot to take the cake out of the oven. Keep an eye on everything for a second," Ino said before she dashed up the stairs to the apartment above the flower shop.

Sakura just nodded and let her head flop onto the counter where the register sat.

_"Blegh," _she thought to herself. And that just about summed up how she felt at the moment. Sakura was far from happy, and she most definitely did not want to be in the flower shop. All she wanted was to be at home, in bed and dead asleep. Her last mission had been horrible; involving a nobleman's daughter's engagement party, a bad undercover outfit and her getting stupid drunk and having to be almost carried back to the inn by Kakashi-sensei. Then they had to hike home in the rain while she was dealing with her very first (and last, if she had anything to say about it) hangover.

And then, upon arrival at her home, she was informed that her mother had volunteered Sakura to help Ino in the flower shop while the two pairs of parents went to some kind of engagement party.

Sakura was ready to kill her mother.

"Okay, now what was I talking about?" Ino said way to cheerfully for Sakura's taste.

_"Or maybe, I should just kill her,"_ Sakura said to herself.

She knew that she was being unkind, but she really didn't care. She felt like she had been run over by stampeding academy students.

"Did I tell you that my father thinks that I should be taking a cooking class?" Ino asked sounding indigent.

"Humm?" Sakura hope that sounded concerned.

"I mean really! What is this? Does he think that this whole ninja thing is just a phase that I'll grow out of?" Ino was warming up to a full blown tirade.

Sakura just raised her head slightly and did her best to look affronted on her friend's behalf.

"See, I knew that you'd agree," Ino said and looked expectantly at Sakura.

_"Damn, I guess I'll have to give her a real response now,"_ Sakura sighed to herself.

"Do you have _time_ for a cooking class?" She asked, implying that her friend didn't have a spare moment at her disposal.

"Exactly! I spend too much time with my team to take some stupid class. They've never complained about the food I've made," Ino said.

_"That's because they're smarter then you give them credit for," _Sakura said to herself.

"How much time do you spend training?" Sakura asked, wondering if Ino really didn't have time on her hands. She did have to help out in her family's business after all.

"About twenty hours a week," Ino answered.

Sakura didn't trust herself to answer that. Twenty hours a week worked out to four hours a day if you took the weekends off. On a week light on missions, Sakura did roughly double that. Usually more, now that she was receiving medical-ninja training a few days a week on top of her group training sessions, her one-on-one sessions with Kakashi-sensei, and what she did on her own.

"How much do you train?" Ino asked.

Sakura shrugged dismissively, "I've never really bothered to count," she said, lying through her teeth.

"I mean, I want to be a ninja and all, but I also want a life outside of the job," Ino continued.

Sakura listened with half an ear, wondering if she could sleep in tomorrow morning.

_"Hmmm," _she thought as Ino continued to talk, _"if Kakashi-sensei is late about two hours on average. That means I could probably set my alarm forty-five minutes later and still get there before he does."_

But knowing her luck, the one day she wasn't on time, he would be. Then she'd be running laps for hours. Instead she decided to just hope that this party their parents were at ended in a timely manner so that she could grab a nap.

"You usually get your own room at inns right?" Ino shot another question at Sakura.

Sakura was wondering how Ino had managed to jump to this particular topic from her last one but she answered, "Yes."

"Good, just wanted to make sure that you did too."

Now, Sakura was a little intrigued, "Why do you ask?"

"Something Asuma-sensei said. I was complaining about the state of the showers at one of the inns we were in, and he told me to consider myself lucky that it least I didn't have to share a room with the boys because most of the time teams would have to share just one room."

"I've always had my own room, tent or whatever. Are you sure that your sensei wasn't just trying to get you to be quiet?"

Ino seemed to think about that for a minute, "You could be right, like when our moms told us that we wouldn't get any breakfast if we were to noisy during a sleepover."

"It worked didn't it?" Sakura asked.

Ino nodded, "Well, anyway I'm glad I don't have to share a room. I wouldn't want Shikamaru or Chouji to see me naked."

"Hmm," Sakura decided to once again go with a non-committal answer. As much as Ino herself ragged on her team mates, if anyone else did it she was known to bite their head off.

"I mean would you want Sasuke or Naruto to see you naked?"

Sakura sighed, "I guess not."

"And I don't think I'd want to see _them_ with out clothes either."

Sakura just nodded towards her blond friend.

"I mean, would you want to see Naruto or Sasuke in the buff?"

Sakura thought for a second, if someone had asked her that same question several months ago she may have considered wanting to catch a glimpse of Sasuke. Now, on the other hand, "Good point."

"And there are times when Asuma-sensei has had to room with the boys," Ino said.

Sakura nodded, it had happened with her team as well, forcing Kakashi into close quarters with the boys.

"I really would **not** want to see him undressed," Ino continued.

Having never really gotten a good look at her friend's sensei, Sakura couldn't really say anything, but from a distance (it was the only way she had ever seen him) he didn't look like he was unattractive.

"Would you want to see Kakashi-sensei like that?"

Sakura bit down on her tongue to keep from saying anything that popped into her head concerning the fact that she had already seen her teacher in various unclothed settings. She was too tried to trust what would come out of her mouth and right now images of her teacher wearing nothing but a pair of low ridding sweat pants and his face mask, along with memories of him a hot spring were racing around her head.

Not to mention the time she had crashed through the window and learned about the lily tattoo.

So instead, she just gave Ino a blank look and hoped that she interpreted it as "no".

"Exactly! It's bad enough that I've had to pick up after the three of them. I should have know better than to try and beat Shikamaru at GO. Stupid bet."

Sakura decided that next time there was a particular chore or job she did not on a mission, she'd try something similar on her two team mates. Sometimes it paid to be the smartest.

"I did _not_ need to know what kind of boxer shorts any of them wears," Ino said, "seriously; do you know what kind of underwear _your_ teacher wears?"

"Kakashi-sensei doesn't wear underwear," the words were out of Sakura's mouth before she had time to really think about what she was saying.

_"DAMN IT!"_ Both Sakuras shouted in her mind as she took in the shocked look on Ino's face.

"And just how do you know that!" Ino shrieked.

Sakura just groaned and wondered just how she was going to talk her way out of this one.

fin


End file.
